Brighton

The beach runs the full length of the seafront, from the Marina past the Palace Pier to Hove, so on a warm day it is the heart of town. Expect steep shingle, not sand. The Channel peaks at about 17-18°C in late summer, which is bracing and fine for a swim on a calm day, and lifeguards patrol the central stretches in season. Year-round sea swimmers go in at dawn even in winter.

For most visitors, though, the beach is somewhere to sit with chips and watch the sea, not a swimming destination. The season is short and grey days are common. Quieter shingle lies under the cliffs at Rottingdean and Saltdean, and the nearest sandy beaches take a drive along the coast.

Brighton eats better than most English towns its size, because so many small independent kitchens are packed into the North Laine, the Lanes and Kemptown. It has long had a reputation for vegetarian and vegan cooking, and its coffee culture is serious, with roasteries and laptop-friendly cafés on almost every street in the North Laine. On the seafront you get fish and chips, whelks and oysters from stalls under the arches, and pubs serve Sunday roasts and local ales.

Sussex sparkling wine from the chalk hills behind town turns up on most wine lists, and the covered Open Market on London Road sells local produce. Do not expect a cuisine of its own. The top end is small, and on summer weekends seafront food leans towards quantity.

The Royal Pavilion is the one sight that would be famous anywhere. George IV's seaside palace has Indian domes outside and chinoiserie interiors inside, and it is as eccentric as anything in Britain. Next door, the Brighton Museum and Art Gallery holds decorative arts and local history. The Palace Pier, the rusting skeleton of the West Pier and the white Regency crescents and squares of Kemptown and Hove give the seafront its character.

The Lanes, a tangle of old fishermen's alleys, and the Victorian Booth Museum of natural history fill out a day or two. Beyond that the city has no big collections or long list of landmarks. It is a place to wander and look at buildings rather than tick off sights.

Going out is a big part of why people come to Brighton. Two universities, a young population and a long history as a weekend escape from London fill the pubs and bars every night of the week. Kemptown is the centre of one of the oldest and largest LGBTQ+ scenes in Britain. West Street and the clubs in the seafront arches carry on until the small hours. The North Laine and the Lanes have pubs, cocktail bars and craft-beer rooms for a gentler night.

Friday and Saturday nights can be loud and messy, with stag and hen parties on West Street. Weeknights, and the bars in Hove and around the Level, are more relaxed.

The South Downs National Park begins on the edge of the city. Rolling chalk grassland, sheep pasture and long views over the Weald are a short bus ride away, at Devil's Dyke or along the South Downs Way, which is good for walking and mountain biking. About forty minutes east, the white cliffs of the Seven Sisters and Beachy Head are the most dramatic coastal scenery in southern England.

The Undercliff Walk below the chalk cliffs to Rottingdean is an easy seaside stroll. Windsurfing, kitesurfing, paddleboarding and sailing are popular off the seafront and from the Marina. The landscape is gentle rather than wild, and wind and rain often decide the day.

London is about an hour away by fast train, which on its own makes Brighton an unusually rich base. Sussex fills in the rest. Lewes, with its castle and steep high street, is a quarter of an hour by train. Arundel has a castle and cathedral above the River Arun. Chichester has its cathedral and Roman palace at Fishbourne. Rye and Winchelsea are cobbled medieval towns towards Kent, and the battlefield and abbey at Battle mark the Norman Conquest.

Portsmouth's Historic Dockyard is about an hour and a half west. The vineyards on the Downs offer tastings of English sparkling wine, and the country houses and gardens of the Weald, from Petworth to Sheffield Park, make easy outings by car.

Brighton is a classic English seaside outing for children. The Palace Pier has rides and arcades, the Victorian aquarium on the seafront is one of the oldest in the world, and Volk's Electric Railway rattles along the beach as it has since 1883. Children can paddle at Hove Lagoon, and the seafront playgrounds and the observation tower add to it. The Booth Museum's cases of birds and bones suit curious older children, and a zoo park sits out in the Sussex countryside.

The centre is compact and walkable with a pushchair, though the slope up to the station is steep. Shingle and cold water make the beach better for rock-throwing than sandcastles. Late on weekend nights the centre is no place for children.

Almost everything a visitor wants is within walking distance: the station, the North Laine, the Lanes, the Pavilion and the seafront. The walk down from the station to the sea takes about fifteen minutes. Coming back means a steady climb, and Kemptown and the streets above the centre are steep. A dense, frequent bus network with contactless fares covers the rest of the city, Hove and the edge of the Downs. The flat seafront promenade is good for cycling.

A car is a hindrance in town, where parking is scarce and the one-way system is confusing. Trains go straight to London, Lewes and along the coast, and you only need a car for the remoter villages and country houses.

Brighton's shopping is independent, not upmarket. The North Laine is a grid of narrow streets lined with vintage clothing, record shops, retro furniture, comics, crafts and alternative fashion, busiest on Saturdays. A few minutes away, the Lanes specialise in jewellery, antique dealers and small boutiques in the old alleys.

The usual high-street chains are in Churchill Square and on Western Road. There are no luxury streets or grand department stores, so people who come for big-name fashion will find little. For browsing and finding something odd, it is one of the more rewarding small cities in Britain.

Brighton is an expensive place to stay. Rooms cost the most on summer weekends, when seafront hotels fill with Londoners and party groups and the cheaper guesthouses book up early. Midweek and in winter the same rooms are much easier on the budget. Restaurants, cafés and pubs charge typical south-of-England prices, and a night out on the seafront adds up quickly.

Once you have a room, most other costs are small. The centre is walkable, the buses are reasonably priced, and the beach, the piers, the Lanes and the Downs cost nothing. The Royal Pavilion is the one big paid sight. Train fares are the cost to watch if you plan several day trips.

For a city of its size, Brighton puts on a lot of performance. Every May the Brighton Festival and the Brighton Fringe, the largest fringe in England, fill theatres, churches, pubs and pop-up spaces with theatre, comedy, music and street performance for weeks. The rest of the year, the Brighton Dome complex hosts concerts and touring acts, and the Victorian Theatre Royal stages drama and touring productions.

The live-music circuit is deep, from small rooms above pubs to seafront venues for indie, folk and electronic acts, and the comedy scene is strong. Glyndebourne's country-house opera festival, held each summer in the Sussex Downs near Lewes, is about twenty minutes away, though tickets are sought after.

Brighton is not a place you come to for treatments. It has a handful of day spas and hotel spas, but no thermal baths or bathing tradition to build a vacation around. The nearest thing to a ritual is the hardy sea-swimming community that goes into the Channel at dawn all year round, and the seafront saunas where they warm up afterwards.

A quiet midweek out of season is the restful version of Brighton: long walks along Hove's lawns and beach huts, the sound of shingle, and cafés with a sea view. Summer weekends are the opposite. For real calm, head for the villages and hills of the Downs.